https://doi.org/10.11649/ch.2020.008 Colloquia Humanistica 9 (2020) Sephardim, Ashkenazim and Non-Jewish Peoples: Encounters Across Europe COLLOQUIA HUMANISTICA Maria Piekarska Faculty of “Artes Liberales” University of Warsaw Warsaw https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7015-9012 [email protected] “Instead of Tombstones – a Tree, a Garden, a Grove”: Early Israeli Forests as Environmental Memorials Abstract Te article adds a material-semiotic memory studies perspective to the discussion on the two largest aforestation projects of early Israeli statehood: Ya’ar HaMeginim (Defenders’ Forest) and Ya’ar HaKedoshim (Martyrs’ Forest). Considering the multiplicity of contexts related to mass tree planting practices conducted by the Jewish National Fund in Israel, the article analyses the two arboreal complexes as environmental memorials. As such, they are attributed with narrative agency that strongly associates the object of commemoration with socially constructed pastoral features of nature. Moreover, due to their organic substance, they hold afective and material capacities that signifcantly infuence the commemorative afer-efects. Te two Israeli mnemonic assemblages are examined, and conclusions are drawn on the possible outcomes of environmental memorials for collective memory processes. Keywords: memory studies, environmental memorial, forest, landscape, material-semiotic perspective, Zionism, Israel. Tis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 PL License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/), which permits redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, provided that the article is properly cited. © Te Author(s), 2020. Publisher: Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences Editor-in-chief: Jolanta Sujecka Conception and academic editing of this issue: Aleksandra Twardowska, Katarzyna Taczyńska Maria Piekarska emorials refect both past experiences and the current lives of Mtheir communities, producing “shared spaces that lend a common spatial frame to otherwise disparate experiences and understandings” (Young, 1993, p. 6). Still, a memorial’s agency manifests itself not only in its primary social role of a narrative medium, or the ability to invoke certain afects, but also in its materiality and the resulting transformations it undergoes as a space/object. In fact, “humans, objects, and memories are bound up with each other in their material presences, creating assemblages made of persons, things, and traces of the past” (Freeman et al., 2016, p. 5), and those mnemonic assemblages should be analysed not as binaries, but as an interrelated material-semiotic network. Such a combined perspective allows the scope of analyses to be extended beyond the national narrative lens, following the third phase of memory studies that shifs its focus to the present/future oriented aspects of memory (Erll, 2011). In investigations of the textual and extra-textual aspects of memory sites (Ladino, 2019, p. 15), memorials established with organic matter in natural spaces deserve special attention. Environmental Memorials Environmental memorials engage organic material as both the building and the symbolically signifying substance. Teir physical results are human alterations of the natural landscape for commemorative purposes. Symbolically, they associate the object of remembrance with meanings commonly attributed to nature in its social construction: authenticity, neutrality, peace, tranquillity. Natural objects can also serve as symbolic stabilisers in an unstable situation through the imagined sense of nature’s endurance, infniteness and place-belonging (Sather-Wagstaf, 2015). Such common sentiments make natural landscapes a powerful mnemonic tool, subtly communicating the stability and authenticity of the representations of the past. Not only the natural landscape is modifed, as also happens every time a monument is erected; environmental memorials engage nature in its mnemonic activity through anthropomorphising narratives, attributing human features of remembering to vegetative assemblages. Trough these semiotic confgurations, the nature-cultures of memory thus produced act as a legitimising medium for the narrative being performed. Memory sites in nature also guide the visitor to experience the narrative in a particular way. Exploring the symbolism of gardens, Dmitry Likhachev mentions two simultaneous types of their semiotics – one presenting itself 102 COLLOQUIA HUMANISTICA “INSTEAD OF TOMBSTONES – A TREE, A GARDEN, A GROVE” through the medium of adequately expressed words or explanations, most commonly embodied as a monument, sculpture or text marker, and the other through the general atmosphere that the garden or its part exerts. It is no longer about “reading” or “decoding” the garden, but about the emotional reaction to it; the garden’s meaning is found not outside of it, but within (Lichaczow, 1991, pp. 9, 22; Salwa, 2014, p. 16). Rustling leaves, sof wind, colour variety, general quietness – such stimuli add to the materiality of an environmental memorial, together building an afective assemblage that produces certain efects in its visitor. Environmental memorials should thus be attributed with both narrative agency, in the sense of the possibility of transmitting a narrative (Ryan et al., 2017, pp. 160–164), and afective agency, i.e. the physical environment’s forceful capacity to generate impressions on other bodies (Ladino, 2019, pp. 14–17). Moreover, nature as a building material is “an active organic component in the changing co-constitution of place and place meanings” (Cloke & Pawson, 2008, p. 107). Considering that nature is particularly “vibrant matter” (Bennett, 2009), an environmental memorial acts, matures and transforms in an entirely diferent manner than a stone-cast monument, adding new challenges as well as possibilities to its mnemonic functions. Te role of nature in mnemonic contexts should then be seen not only as a space where commemorative rituals take place, or as a narrative- transmitting medium, but also as an actant in mnemonic practice. Certain distinctions have to be made regarding the term “environmental memorial”. It has been used in diferent contexts to identify memorials of the Anthropocene which mourn dying nature and help “future generations remember what once thrived in certain places” (Bauman, 2015, p. 21). It has also been used for non-sites of memory, where it is understood as biological markers at a burial site, retaining an active meaning of knowing, not just passive commemorating (Sendyka, 2017, pp. 133–143). It is also separate from the term “natural monument” (Pol. pomnik przyrody), which defnes an existing part of nature (not planted or intentionally created for mnemonics’ sake) deemed socially important for combining both natural and cultural values for the collective (Salwa, 2018, pp. 50–55). I would argue that the term “environmental memorial” is most suitable for the material-semiotic perspective, as these complexes not only engage nature’s symbolic functions, but also build their own natural-cultural environments of a commemorative character. Te term environmental memorial is also inclusive, covering a wider spectrum of memorials, not limited to purely “vegetal” sites – forests, gardens, etc. It leaves the possibility to analyse less common commemorative devices in nature in a similar framework, e.g. walking paths or viewpoints. COLLOQUIA HUMANISTICA 103 Maria Piekarska Despite the possible diversity of environmental memorials, the most common type are tree memorials. Already in the 19th century in France and America, garden cemeteries were designed to create “a meaningful link between dying on the one hand and the cosmic rhythms of nature on the other” (Mosse, 1990, p. 114). Trees as memory markers are perhaps most commonly attributed with losses resulting from a violent past. Such “greening of deathscapes” allows painful heritage to be displayed in a mediated way, turning to pastoral aspects of nature as an alternative to confict and violence, and using the symbols of soil, burial, and fourishing life above ground (Sather-Wagstaf, 2015, p. 237). Nature has been strongly associated with the national cult of fallen soldiers during the First World War, concurrently in Germany and the British Empire. In Germany, Heldenhaine – Heroes’ Groves – were created, where planted trees took the place of actual graves, each symbolising an individual soldier who became part of nature’s cycle of death and resurrection (Mosse, 1990, pp. 87–89). Tis romantic practice invoked nationalist primordialism: the species planted was oak, envisioned as a native Germanic tree, and attention was diverted away from the impersonality of war towards the preindustrial ideals of the noble beginnings of the nation (Mosse, 1990, p. 110). In Australia and New Zealand, First World War commemorations took the more linear form of arboreal avenues of honour. Again, they provided a direct sense of individuality, as each tree was planted for a specifc soldier (Dargavel, 2000, p. 190). Regarding civilian victims, the mnemonic function of trees is used in the context of post-genocidal spaces1 and, more recently, in mourning terrorist attacks (Heath-Kelly, 2018, p. 63). Survivor trees are a separate yet intrinsically connected mnemonic phenomenon. Tey appear at diferent sites of violence: e.g. the Bełżec death camp (Małczyński, 2010), Hiroshima (Smykowski, 2018) and the World Trade Center ruins (Heath-Kelly, 2018). Teir existence does not stem from the planter’s